I wasn’t especially animated by the initial revelations about then Gov. Daniels’ e-mail exchange about teaching Howard Zinn in the schools. It didn’t exactly come as a shock that Gov. Daniels didn’t like Zinn. The idea that the wealthy might be profiting from value extracted from the poor rather than enjoying the just rewards of their own contributions is counter to Gov. Daniels’ worldview.
And, getting animated about not teaching such things in school, while questionable as official government policy, also didn’t shock me because, so far as I can tell, things didn’t make it past the e-mail stage. I can confess that I’ve talked a lot of intemperate trash about an opponent’s case that never managed to find its way into a formal motion or pleading.
But, his response has prompted me to follow up on the story. Daniels told WBAA’s Mike Loizzo:
“[I] simply was inquiring about the K-12 system and asking whether this false, misleading version of American history had found its way into Indiana classrooms.”
Sounds vaguely reasonable. I’d get a little disturbed if I found my kids were being forced to memorize passages from Mao’s Little Red Book. But, it’s not quite as simple as all of that. Take a look at the e-mail exchange. He was proposing to eliminate credit hours for teachers taking classes that taught Zinn’s perspective on American history. That’s a horse of a different color. Now he’s getting closer to indoctrinating the teachers than shielding the children.
Doghouse Riley suggests that Daniels’ concern about Zinn’s “A People’s Histors” being taught as the “text book of choice in high schools and colleges” started as anti-fluoridationist hyperbole by Roger Kimball in the National Review.
From there, you have his education policy director talking smack about IU and mentioning that there was a course on the labor, civil rights, and feminist movements available for teacher continuing education credits. “Zinn along with other anti American leftist teachings are prominently featured.” Daniels responds that, “this crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state.” He follows up by suggesting a clean up in what is credit worthy in professional development. He puts “professional development” in scare quotes. He apparently deems Zinn’s work as “propaganda,” not suitable for teacher professional development classes.
So, Gov. Daniels’ insistence that he was just concerned for K-12 students looks suspect. He was directly targeting the substance of college courses in a way that would affect the substance of K-12 only indirectly.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Thank you for publishing!
We are not all quite as gullible as he thinks. And he is not as honest as would be preferred by those he serves as the president of Purdue University (and the Governor of Indiana). What a sad and foul-smelling situation.
It all comes down to the fact that ALL history is propaganda. There are degrees, from subtly shaded to blantant revisionism, but even those who witnessed it or participated in it have their recollections colored by choice or by environment.
In this case, I imagine that former Governor Daniels is a believer in monetized education. Either it provides “value” to the system (as it currently exists in Indiana) or it is lies and propaganda. That being a particularly slanted point of view in and of itself.
—Leto II “God Emperor of Dune”
Great quote.
Own the past and you own the present.
Orwell, I think.
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/winter1213/Wineburg.pdf
Professional development affecting K-12 is valid concern of governor. You missed the recommendation that IU’s School of Education should have been barred from issuing undergraduate degrees. See Chancellor Bantz at IUPUI for transcripts of the forum where three national K-12 education reform experts agreed to this policy. Mitch was mild.
Here is a good exchange with Sam Wineburg who wrote the article linked above. I liked the close:
One reason I think Daniels is taking so much crap over this event is that it’s hard not to conclude that his objection to Zinn is based more on his politics than his lack of historical rigor. I have a hard time thinking that Gov. Daniels and his staff would have such an emotional response if teachers were being exposed to the work of David Barton. (This is not so far-fetched inasmuch as Barton was apparently invited to participate in some capacity in the review of the social studies curriculum for the Texas public schools.)
I agree with you about Daniels’ take, ” that his objection to Zinn is based more on his politics than his lack of historical rigor”. However, if that had been his prime objection, the same Wineburg article you source does state, “I think most historians agree that the book is pretty weak as a piece of historical scholarship.”
I don’t agree with all of Zinn’s conclusions, but I very much appreciated the main impetus of Zinn’s work- to give voice to those previously excluded from the discourse. For that, weak or not, it is invaluable. It just begs for a more scholarly and less biased approach to representing those voices.
I have a serious beef with Daniels’ presumption that only college students be permitted to entertain a pluralistic view of history. What about all of those Hoosiers who don’t go to college? Shouldn’t they graduate from high school with an ability to wrangle with complex information? They’re able to vote, and to join the military.
The caution I’d have with Zinn in particular is that apparently credible sources find his scholarship sketchy — in particular tenuous citations and dubious context. If that criticism is warranted (and I personally have no idea if it is or isn’t), then I’d suggest not using him as source material for students.
That said, I’m all for hitting kids with a variety of perspectives; not just the jingoistic, pro-capitalism rah rah stuff (although, frankly, I want some of that in the curriculum as well.)
That’s precisely what makes him so valuable, though: because his agenda is so transparent, A People’s History is a wonderful tool for introducing people to a number of analytical concepts that are central not just to history or to the humanities, but indeed to life in a pluralistic society comprised of people with different backgrounds, experiences, and cultural memories: it forces them to come to grips with the fact that there are multiple perspectives, that powerful institutions have a vested interest in promoting self-serving narratives, and that the very notion of “objectivity,” a vestige of a now-outdated modernist epistemology, is something that should be critically engaged with and questioned.
“Objectivity” has all too often been used as a sort of shield, as a means of either (a) avoiding responsibility for the effects of what one’s research has on people, or (b) giving an air of authoritative finality to one’s preferred narrative, by enabling one to merely dismiss one’s opponents as being “biased” or “subjective” (which they almost certainly are, of course; the problem is that that is equally true of the person who is claiming “objectivity”). All too often, “objectivity” has turned out to be merely code for “the narrative with the most money or guns or votes backing it up.”
The beauty of Zinn, then, is that he gives us an agenda that’s impossible to miss, and at the same time directly subverts the agenda behind the dominant narratives students are exposed to. The general consensus among modern-day scholars of US history is, as best I can gather, that he often gives undue weight to historical figures beyond what most historians would think is supported by the evidence, and indeed does ignore a bit of inconvenient context in interpreting sources. But nothing he says is blatantly false, and so he is able to force the reader to consider not only what his own agenda is, but also what agenda lies behind narratives that omit altogether the role played by those upon whom Zinn directs his focus–and, by extension, what agenda those who promote the dominant narratives and who decry alternative narratives as, in Daniels’s words, “execrable, anti-factual,” and “totally false” have.
Kurt–Your analysis is excellent. Sometimes this kind of literature is best for the kind of thinking and discussion it provokes, rather than the literal message it brings because it challenges people to think. Actually, it has value on any number of levels, depending who you are, your position on the various issues and how much actual reading you have done. That’s what makes it a good tool in a classroom. People start questioning what he says, what they’ve read and been told, and wonder what “historical truth” is. They argue, lose sleep and struggle. Anyone who can get people to do that sort of activity is a super teacher, and someone who will fill a classroom. Socrates did it and wound up with the same acolades as Mr. Zinn.
Well, perhaps “wrangl(ing) with complex information” just isn’t the former Governor’s style? Attention to detail seems to be one of his weaker points.
Barton does not fare well on Wikipedia.
Christian Nationalist and revisionist historian.
George Orwell would recognize both Daniels and Pence.
There are an awful lot of people on both sides of the aisle that Orwell would recognize.
Thanks for this piece. Daniels’ response mischaracterizes the exchange and should be an embarrassment to him. You are right, it is clearly about the content of courses for teachers. On the other hand, Daniels seems to think that since the state sets the curriculum for K-12, he as governor should have been able to decide personally what texts were admissible. That is shocking. It is profoundly undemocratic.
In these e-mails, Scott Jenkins, Daniels’ education policy advisor, drew Daniels’ attention to a course for teachers on social movements including labor, civil rights, and feminism. He pointed to its reading list as a reason that “we need to change the incentive structure and content requirements of professional development for teachers.” Now Jenkins is Director of External Relations (marketing?) for Western Governors University, an online university whose faculty do not produce their own course content. In that role, he testified on July 9 to the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee: http://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/jenkins_testimony_final.pdf. His eagerness in those e-mails to make politically based decisions on what Indiana students should be reading should disqualify him from academic leadership positions.
Western Governors University is a trade school, not an institution of higher learning.
When people define an education as training you need to qualify for a low paying job, that’s education. That other stuff is for liberal elite phony people who think they’re too good for WGU.
I just laugh when I hear individuals on the right speak of the evils of “propaganda” when their agenda is disseminated to the masses by the same method. My belief is that conservative thinkers believe, “If you say it often enough, it will be true.” Thank you to all for the more studied insights into this topic.
Social science teachers should already be familiar with Zinn and prepared to introduce, analyze and discuss in the appropriate classroom setting. If Zinn wasn’t covered in undergrad for social science teachers our universities have some ‘splaining to do.
Likewise, too many children haven’t mastered the three R’s. Our teaching and research universities would be best serving our children by developing professional development aimed at reaching those currently unreachable. Professional development shouldn’t be confused with intellectual enrichment.
Daniels is just upset that the emails reveal the true, small-minded man that he is. He probably never thought those emails would see the light of day. He’s tried to backpedal a bit, but the content of the email messages should be troubling to everyone.
It seemed that Daniels, a man who claims to be a Christian, was almost rejoicing at Zinn’s death. Zinn was a World War II veteran and a learned man, but Daniels slammed him as “terrible and anti-American.” Scott Jenkins went so far as to write that his children would not go to IU because the NEH summer institute for school teachers featured writings by Zinn and was about social movements in America. Daniels responded that such “crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state.” Can anyone read the email exchange and come away with a belief that Daniels is in favor of academic freedom?